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воскресенье, 9 ноября 2014 г.

Will Burma end one of the world’s longest wars?

By Annie Gowen

In a grim scene earlier this
week, the body of a journalist slain in the custody of the Burmese military was
exhumed from a grassy grave and taken to a hospital for an autopsy.

The freelance journalist, Par
Gyi, also known as Aung Kyaw Naing, had been arrested covering ethnic clashes
along the country’s southeastern border, and his death at the hands of the army
sparked international outrage.

Just days before President
Obama is scheduled to visit Burma for a summit of Asian leaders, the country’s
insurgencies, among the longest-running in the world, are again in the
spotlight.

Prominent rights groups say
Aung Kyaw Naing’s death is one more sign that the military is engaging in the
same brutality against citizens that it exhibited during decades of military
rule in Burma, before the generals ceded power to a nominally civilian
government in 2010. They say it also indicates that the country’s transition to
democracy is not going as hoped.

The Burmese army said Aung Kyaw
Naing was a rebel who was killed during an escape attempt, but the country’s
national human rights commission has ordered an investigation.

A dizzying number of armed
ethnic groups have operated in Burma, also known as Myanmar, since the
country’s independence in 1948, with as many as 48 active since 2009, according
to the Myanmar Peace Center. The government has signed cease-fire agreements
with 14 of these groups individually, but a nationwide cease-fire remains
elusive. A peace accord was one of the key pledges that President Thein Sein
made to Obama when Obama first visited Burma in 2012.

The human rights organizations
Fortify Rights and the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School
both released reports this week alleging that Burmese armed forces, including
some high-ranking officers, committed war crimes against civilians during the
country’s ongoing conflict with ethnic militias in its east and north.

“It basically demonstrates that
the military is conducting itself in the same way it has for decades, which is
totally inconsistent with rosy narrative of human rights reform that the
government is presenting to the world,” said Matthew Smith, the executive
director of Fortify Rights.

The complicated peace
negotiations, which appear to be stalled, are often overshadowed by the
humanitarian crisis with Burma's Rohingya Muslim population and the need for
constitutional reform -- issues of concern for the Obama administration, which
has supported Burma’s steps toward democratic reform. The country’s
constitution still bars Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the pro-democracy
party, from becoming president.

Suu Kyi, at a news conference
Wednesday in Rangoon, said she thinks the country has not progressed in the
last two years. "We do think there have been times when the United States
government has been overly optimistic about the reform process," Suu Kyi
said. "What significant reforms
have been taken within the last 24 months?"

Yanghee Lee, the U.N. special
rapporteur on human rights in Burma, said in an address last week at the United
Nations that this ethnic strife continues to cause “significant suffering” in
the country of more than 55 million, isolated as a pariah state during decades
of military rule. Around 613,000 people have been displaced from various areas
of conflict around the country, according to the United Nations.

“Serious human rights violations
are being committed on both sides, and I am particularly concerned by continued
reports of arbitrary detention, torture and impunity on the side of the
military,” Lee said.

One of the largest militias is
the Kachin Independence Army, a group of between 5,000 to 10,000 fighters in
the country’s north, home to thousands of ethnic Kachin Christians. (Burma is
about 60 percent ethnic Burman, with the remaining 40 percent comprised of more
than 135 ethnic groups.) The Burmese military and the Kachins have been
fighting for much of the last 50 years, with the most recent spate of violence
flaring in June 2011.

In its report, Fortify Rights
detailed what it said was an ongoing pattern of abuse by the Burmese military
against civilians in Kachin state. It alleged that the Burmese army had shelled
and razed homes, attacked makeshift camps built for refugees and committed
extrajudicial killings in the last three years. In a previous report in June,
Fortify Rights researchers also interviewed Christians in Kachin who said they
were targeted because of their faith.

When asked generally about
alleged human rights abuses committed by the military, the president’s
spokesman, Ye Htut, said in a June interview that both sides had contributed to
the problem and that the ethnic strife had mostly been resolved, except “a
small conflict in the Kachin area.” In addition, “civil society [activists] are
more actively working in that conflict area than they have in the past,” he
said. Ye Htut did not return telephone calls or an e-mail request for comment
this week.

The government has said it
expects to sign a peace agreement with the ethnic militias this year or in
early 2015.

Many activists and skeptics in
the West regard that as an optimistic timeline. Some of the disputed
territories are rich in timber and other natural resources, as well as mines of
coveted jade, and the ethnic groups want to share in that bounty. So even if
there is a nationwide cease-fire agreement -- as the government hopes -- and
all sides lay down their arms, experts say Burma’s internal conflict is far
from over.

Facts from History

CEDAW

UNSCR 1325

Strategy for engagement and joint actions on confidence building and P2P diplomacy that involve women. Final Report

YOUTH PEACE PLAN OF GEORGIA

This publication is produced within the framework of the project - ‘‘Support Democratic Participation of Young Women in Building Peace and Stability in Georgia’’ implemented in Georgia by International Network for Civil Development - INCD in partnership with Young Women Experts’ Network for Peace and Security (YWEPS) and with the financial support of the Embassy of Canada through Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI).